A typical conveyor used for conveying relatively small articles includes a generally U-shaped frame and a drive spindle is journaled relative to the frame and carries a conveyor belt. As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,923,148, the bearings for journaling the spindle relative to the frame can be located within the spindle with the result that no bearings project laterally beyond the side walls of the frame, thus enabling two conveyors to be placed in close side-by-side relation.
To drive the spindle, the spindle is formed with an integral internal bushing having a hexagonal or other non-circular shaped opening that receives the hexagonal end of a drive shaft, thus enabling rotation of the drive shaft to be transmitted to the spindle. To prevent axial displacement of the drive shaft from the spindle, it has been the practice to thread a bolt into the inner end of the drive shaft and the head of the bolt bears against the end of the bushing to prevent axial displacement of the drive shaft from the spindle. With this construction, the bolt is threaded into the end of the drive shaft using an elongated tool, which is inserted from the opposite end of the spindle and engages the bolt head. As conveyors of this type may have a substantial width, up to twenty-four or thirty inches, it is a difficult and tedious task to engage and disengage the bolt from the inner end of the drive shaft.
In the typical conveyor, as used in the past, the hexagonal opening in the spindle bushing was formed by a broaching operation. With elongated spindles as used with wide conveyors, it has proven difficult to broach a hexagonal bushing opening in both ends of the spindle, with the result that the spindle has normally been provided with only one hexagonal bushing opening adjacent one end of the spindle. Therefore the drive shaft could be mounted only on one side of the conveyor frame and could not be reversed to the opposite side.